A Glimpse at Happiness

by Jean Fullerton

  Robert’s lower lip trembled and tears filled his eyes. He nodded and pressed her hand to his cheek.

  Ellen gave a ghost of a smile and then closed her eyes. Robert looked at Josie, who stumbled out of the room and made her way upstairs to the nursery.

  She stopped outside and wiped her face with the heel of her hand and tidied her hair. It would be difficult enough for the children to see their mother on the brink of death without seeing their older sister buckle, too.

  As she opened the door, four pairs of eyes fixed on her. Bobby and Charlotte were sitting on the window seat together while George sat on the straight-backed chair by the window. Although, at six, Joe couldn’t quite understand why everyone was so sad, the fact that his usually lively siblings were all subdued was enough for him to seek comfort in his thumb and ragged blanket. Only baby Jack, sleeping soundly in his painted cot, was unaffected by the mood in the house.

  Josie held out her arms to her sisters and they jumped down and dashed over to her. Josie hugged them and kissed the top of their heads in turn.

  Bobby looked up. ‘Is Mama—’

  ‘Mama is very ill,’ Josie cut in. ‘Pa wants you to come.’

  Bobby gave a nod and took hold of Lottie’s hand. Josie went over to the boys.

  Nurse looked at her with wide eyes and stifled a sob into her handkerchief.

  ‘I’ll take George and Joe if you carry Jack,’ Josie told her.

  The young woman gently scooped up the dozing baby while Josie picked up Joe and took George’s hand. ‘Now I want you to be very brave when we go in to Ma and Pa’s bedroom.’

  As they entered the chamber, Josie’s eyes went straight to her mother. Robert hadn’t moved, but whereas when she’d left the room the bright light of day still streamed in through the tall window, now the heavy curtains were drawn. Only the sputtering of oil lamps and Ellen’s laboured breathing broke the silence.

  Robert looked up from his vigil and stood. He took Jack from Nurse, who curtsied and left the room. Robert kissed his sleepy son on the forehead.

  ‘Come and kiss your mother,’ he said.

  Silently the children filed forward and kissed Ellen, then they turned expectantly to their father, who hugged each of them.

  Josie took her place on the other side of the bed. Mrs Munroe came and stood beside her. ‘You can draw comfort, Miss O’Casey, that your mother is passing peacefully into her eternal reward,’ she said, in her best churchy voice.

  Josie gave the old woman a withering look. Then, with a determined look on her face she bent and kissed her mother on the forehead. She turned towards the door.

  ‘Surely you’re not leaving at such a time,’ Mrs Munroe asked.

  Josie cast her gaze over her mother, hovering between life and death, her stepfather manfully trying to hold himself together while comforting his children.

  Her mouth set into a firm line. ‘Me mam’s not dead yet and, as Pa said, we have to build up her strength. So I’m going to prepare a coddled egg and buttermilk for her supper.’

  Mrs Munroe surveyed the parlour as she waited for Robert to bring Ellen down. God in his infinite wisdom had spared Ellen and Mrs Munroe told herself she was pleased he’d done so. While she would never be able to think of her son’s wife as a daughter, seeing how heartbroken the dear children were, she was relieved that her darlings had not had to lose their mother at such a tender age.

  Ignoring the crick in her back, she let her eyes rest on the children. Charlotte kicked her legs under the sofa but for once Mrs Munroe didn’t try to catch her eye to stop her. Bobby, sitting at the other end, twirled her hair although she’d been told not to. Her gaze moved to dear George, so much the little man. She had heard him running down the stairs but had resisted the urge to scold him. Just for today she would not mark their transgressions. The door opened and Josie entered the room carrying Jack. Mrs Munroe’s brows furrowed.

  ‘Mam will be down any moment now,’ Josie said, smiling broadly at her brothers and sisters.

  Mam! What a way to address your mother, Mrs Monroe thought, not for the first time. Thankfully the other children hadn’t picked up the habit, but even so . . .

  Charlotte clapped her hands and Joseph, sitting on Nurse’s lap, copied her. Mrs Munroe’s forehead smoothed. It was a pity that the stillborn child had been another boy but Robert still had three fine sons and Ellen not yet too old to do her duty again.

  Josie dashed across the floor and sat between Charlotte and Bobby. She turned the baby to face her and held him while he practised standing on wobbly legs.

  ‘There you go girls, isn’t Jack a fair one for the jig,’ Josie said, putting on the broadest of Irish accents.

  The girls either side of her giggled and Mrs Munroe suppressed a shudder.

  ‘He’s dancing like the rest of us because Mam’s back to her old self again,’ Josie said, pulling a funny face at Jack and setting him chuckling.

  Mrs Munroe formed her face into an indulgent expression. ‘No one is more pleased than I that your mother is recovering, but prayers of thanks might be more appropriate, don’t you think, Miss O’Casey?’

  Josie’s gaze left the child on her lap and she looked across at her. ‘Well now, you have more Bible learning than me, so I’m sure you’ll be the one to tell us,’ she said, still in the unrestrained Irish accent. ‘But didn’t King David, ancestor of the Lord himself, dance with joy?’

  Mrs Munroe’s irritation with Josie rose from it usual place and sat just under the surface of her chest.

  A small smile crossed Josie’s face and she turned her attention back to Jack, bouncing on her knee. ‘I should think the saints in heaven will be dancing too with Mam on the road to full recovery, ’ she said.

  Robina and Charlotte nodded.

  Mrs Munroe folded her hands carefully over each other and put a sweet smile on her face. ‘Well, now that dear Ellen is recovered, perhaps we won’t see you each morning at the breakfast table with red-rimmed eyes.’

  A look of utter misery shot across Josie’s face so swiftly that Mrs Munroe only just caught it. So, she thought, all that weeping she’d heard behind Josie O’Casey’s door each night was about more than her mother dying.

  Lottie bounced off the sofa and jumped up and down on the spot. ‘I think I can hear them!’

  The door opened and Ellen appeared with Robert holding her supportively around the waist.

  Joe dashed forward but Josie stood up and caught her brother. ‘Let Mam get settled,’ she said, as Robert guided Ellen to the chaise-longue by the window, where warm sunlight streamed in.

  Ellen’s skin was still unnaturally pale, but brightness had returned to her eyes. Carefully lifting her feet, Robert settled her and then covered her with a blanket. He kissed Ellen on the forehead, his lips lingering for a moment before he turned to the children.

  ‘Now, I’m sure you all want to give Mama a kiss,’ he said, as all the children surged forward, ‘but I don’t want you to tire her so no jumping on her lap.’ He looked pointedly at Lottie.

  The girls clambered onto the seat beside Ellen’s legs and hugged her in turn while George, after a few moments of manly stiff upper lip, threw his arms around his mother’s neck.

  The children pressed around Ellen and she held them close, closing her eyes as she hugged them to her.

  Josie held back as her sisters and brothers swarmed over their mother. Nurse brought Jack forward and Ellen kissed him before he and Joe were taken back up to the nursery.

  Daisy brought in the tea tray and set it on the low table in the middle of the room.

  ‘Now, children, let your Mama have a bit of space. Mrs Woodall has made one of her special cherry cakes and you can all have a slice if you sit still while you have your tea,’ Robert said. ‘If you would, Mother, please?’

  Mrs Munroe inclined her head and started to pour the tea. ‘Perhaps, now the children are all here, it would be the right moment to tell them of your planned trip, Robert,’ she said, smiling blan
dly at them all.

  Josie’s brows pulled together. ‘Trip?’

  Mrs Munroe smiled serenely across at Josie. ‘Yes. My son feels that for your mother to recover properly she’ll need the tranquillity and fresh air,’ her smile widened, ‘of Scotland.’

  Josie folded her mother’s smalls neatly and placed them in the leather travelling trunk, aware of her mother’s gaze on her. Ellen sat by the window, her feet up on a footstool and a large paisley shawl over her legs. Never plump, she was now gaunt, and her clothes hung loosely on her. The waxy look of her skin had gone but it was still so pale it appeared almost translucent. Josie’s gaze moved onto Ellen’s thin hands with the bones clearly visible under the covering of skin and then back to her mother’s eyes, sunken deep in their sockets.

  ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you in these past weeks, my love,’ Ellen said.

  Josie forced a smile. A worried expression crossed Ellen’s face and Josie guessed she saw the dark shadows under her own eyes. She picked up a silk chemise and spread it on the bed.

  Each day as sleep gave way to conscious thought, Josie enjoyed a brief moment of joy in her dreams of being married to Patrick. For a few moments her heart wasn’t torn apart and a picture of a happy life with Patrick at her side and the family they would have enfolded her until the day intruded all too swiftly. Then she would open her eyes and the pain would return, forcing her to put on her happy mask and face another day without him, and without the prospect of a future with him.

  After all, people recovered from broken hearts and fell in love again. That’s what she told herself every time some small, unexpected thing - a boy in the street whistling a tune, the throaty sound of a man’s laughter - reminded her of Patrick Nolan.

  ‘You do understand why Robert has asked his mother to take charge of the household while we are away?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Josie replied not looking up.

  Her eyes rested on her mother’s red gown, neatly folded in the well of the trunk. It called to mind the red necktie Patrick wore at Mattie’s wedding and the ache that enclosed her heart tightened. But what could she do? She couldn’t marry him and there was no respectable way they could ever be together. Maybe, in their old life, when they’d run through the streets as barefooted youngsters - but not now. The only way for them was to part and for her to try to live with half her soul missing. Again.

  ‘Dr Pym says I need fresh air and rest and your father has taken a special leave of absence from his post,’ Ellen continued. ‘It’s been very hard on him these last few weeks and although dear Mother is more irritating than grit in your eye, for his sake I’m glad she’s been here.’ Josie looked across at her mother and Ellen gave her a wan smile. ‘In truth, I am as weak as a kitten, but I couldn’t go unless I knew that you were here with Bobby, Lottie and the others.’

  Suddenly, loneliness swept over Josie and tears started to press at the back of her eyes. She bit her lower lip and just about managed to hold them back. She unhooked Ellen’s dark green taffeta gown from the peg and laid it on the bed.

  ‘How long will you be gone?’ she asked, trying not to let the dreadful prospect of being left in the house with Mrs Munroe betray itself in her voice.

  ‘Just the summer, until September,’ Ellen replied.

  Three months!

  ‘I know it will be difficult for you, Josie,’ Ellen said.

  Difficult! Nigh on impossible was more the truth. It was awful enough to have Mrs Munroe around with Mam and Pa in the house. It would be sheer hell with them gone.

  ‘I wouldn’t go, Josie, but Robert’s been through so much, what with losing the baby and seeing me so ill.’

  Josie left the packing to sit on the footstool at Ellen’s feet. ‘Of course you have to go, Mam. Not just for Pa’s sake but for your own.’ She took her mother’s hands. ‘The Highland air will soon put the apples back in your cheeks and you’ll be chasing George and Joe around the place again in no time.’ A serious expression spread across Josie’s face. ‘We nearly lost you, Mam, and if you have to stay in Scotland for a whole year before you’re back to being my mam again, then so be it.’

  Ellen moved a stray tendril of hair away from Josie’s brow. ‘So it’s not that Robert’s mother is to run the house that’s caused your long face, then?’

  Josie gave her a quirky smile. ‘I don’t relish the prospect but I’m sure I’ll survive.’

  ‘What is the matter, Josie?’ Ellen asked.

  Looking at her mother’s drawn face, Josie wondered whether she should tell her. She so wanted to. They had shared so much hardship before Robert that they had a bond which would never be broken but, as she took in her mother’s pinched face, she knew that she couldn’t worry her now.

  What could she say, anyway? That she was in love with Patrick but his wife was still alive? Could she also tell her mother, just having risen from her sick bed, that not only was she in love with a married man but in her weakest moment, when her need of Patrick almost overwhelmed her, she’d contemplated becoming his wife without the benefit of the Church?

  No. She could not. Not just yet.

  Ignoring her aching heart, Josie put on her brightest smile. ‘I’ll miss you, that’s all.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Ellen’s sharp eyes examined Josie’s face carefully. ‘It’s not something about Patrick?’

  Josie gave a hollow laugh. ‘No. I doubt I’ll see much of him now that Mattie’s married.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s for the best,’ Ellen continued in a cheerful tone. ‘In time you will meet someone else - someone you already know perhaps.’ She winked at Josie. ‘I thought I might invite Mr Arnold to tea before Robert and I leave.’

  Josie ignored the chasm of unhappiness before her and forced a smile. ‘That would be nice.’

  A satisfied smile spread across her mother’s face. She leant forward and patted Josie’s hand. ‘William Arnold might not have grand curly hair but he has prospects, and his godfather is Sir Edgar Wilmore.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Josie bit the end of the quill and re-read the first paragraph of her letter.

  Dear Mam,

  I hope that this letter finds you in improved health and enjoying the sights of Edinburgh. We are all going on fine here although we miss you and Pa greatly. The weather in London is fair although there was a thunder storm last week.

  She stopped as sorrow welled up from deep inside. Since her mother and stepfather had departed for Scotland, Josie had found that being in the house with Mrs Munroe wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined it might be. It was ten times worse.

  The children have had some adjustment to make as Mrs Munroe isn’t able to keep up with the younger ones, so she has introduced a few quiet activities to their daily regime.

  A half smile formed itself on Josie lips. That was a windy road way of saying that all the fun and laugher and afternoons playing with toys had been replaced by hours of Bible readings and prayers.

  She also believes the childrens’ diet to be too rich and has asked Mrs Woodall to modify some of her dishes.

  Despite her despondency, a quirky smile moved her lips. Unfortunately, she couldn’t put Mrs Woodall’s lively comments on the matter down in the letter.

  The children miss you but I have explained that you will soon be back. Joe has had a couple of nights when he woke shouting but I snuggled him in with me and now he has returned to the nursery without further incidents.

  That was true, but she didn’t feel that she could add that he had started wetting his bed again or that he clung to her hand when Mrs Munroe undertook her daily nursery inspection.

  Mrs Munroe has expressed a desire to have the parlour for her own use in the afternoons so I have moved the nursing chair from your room into mine and now Lottie and Bobby sew with me in here each afternoon.

  And give them a respite from Mrs Munroe’s ever critical eye, she thought but didn’t write.

  George had a fever last week but is now fu
lly recovered.

  Josie stopped and chewed the tip of the pen again. Her mother should be resting and recovering and, although Josie didn’t want to upset her in any way, she felt she should know the truth about the incident.

  I know that Pa doesn’t hold with such things, but before I could explain his views on old remedies Mrs Munroe had already secured a blister plaster on George’s stomach to draw out the humours. I am sorry to tell you that before nurse informed me of what was happening the vitriol and paraffin had been on George’s skin for a half an hour. Thankfully, after applying camomile lotion the redness has completely disappeared. He is quite recovered and back to riding his toy horse around the garden.